Dans ma trousse

Another inventive fun MFL animation made by teachers during my residency in Gateshead. I like the simple approach to pimping the contents of the pencil case, a quick and effective way of creating easy to animate characters. Made in a day, the song gave focus to the idea.

Look out for special guest, Pritney the glue stick!

Man on wire- The animation

A lovely animation, made by two teachers, they arrived at the course prepared with the idea of animating the song Philippe Petit, we decided card cut outs would be easier to animate, with a mix of plasticine. The film was made as part of a week long residency for Gateshead education authority, during the four days, I worked with both teachers and students. In total 22 films were made and on Friday the schools involved will be able to watch their films on the big screen, at the Odeon cinema in Gateshead. More examples form the week to follow.

Vote for your favourite animation

Animated science- Light And Shadows

This short animation was made today in Bristol by teachers on a course I was running, a simple way to demonstrate how the sun moving through the sky during the day effects the length of our shadows. Students in key stage 2 look at light and shadows as a science topic.

Using animation to visualising processes and outcomes of simple science experiments is an effective way of cementing understanding.

London's Burning- The making of.

London's burning for KS 2. Animating a historical topic area is a great way for students to cement and consolidate their learning and understanding of the topic. Cram in facts and information on location, number of deaths, when, etc.

I have also included a behind the scenes, "The making of" clip. Shows how the teachers without their music trolley used technology and a crisp wrapper to create a simple sound track.

On the iPhone he used the app Ocarina for the music and she uses a crisp wrapper for the sound of fire ripping through the buildings. Using a plastic wrapper is apparently the method used in films during the 1940' - 1960's to create the sound of fire, very effective. The sound is captured straight into the laptop with the built in webcam on a HD webcam.

Of Mice and Men - Three short scenes

These three short extracts were made by year nine students at the Newline Learning Academy in Kent. The students did a great job of adapting their understanding of this fantastic classic in just one day. Each group of five students chose a scene from the book they wanted to bring to life.

They were able to choose any scene from the story and all four groups veered towards the most dramatic scenes, involving plenty of conflict. This enabled the students to explore both the character's inner conflict and the external conflict situations the character's were in.

These two short extracts really demonstrate how animation, like drama, is a great way of exploring in detail the essence of a scene or a character.

Enjoy the clips.

Working with sound- POV. Keep it painfully simple. Part 1

My latest project is in Devon with a small group of Primary teachers on stage two of the Persistence Of Vision Project. Briefly this project aims to use animation in a variety of forms with different education authorities to explore poetic themes and poetry at both key stages in Primary. Running over a year there will be four training sessions for teachers from five schools within Devon.

Yesterday's session focused on two areas;

1- Group discussion and evaluation of their first attempt of animation with classes.

2- Working with sound.

In this blog I'm going to share the excellent work the teachers created and elements of the approach to achieving the outcomes in a short space of time.

So the afternoon was given over to "Working with Sound".

My aim during any training session is to encourage simplicity when devising ideas, so for this sound effect session, I played the group four sound effects that I thought had a poetic quality and would encourage visual ideas.

They were only allowed to use 1 or 2 of the sound effects in their animation, from the four I played them.

The groups then brain stormed ideas and created simple models from plasticine, this took about 30 minutes.

Then the groups filmed for 45 minutes.

Then using Movie Maker added the sound effects to their animations, as well as titles and transitions.

The whole task only took 2.5 hours to complete.

This approach to encouraging visual thought processes and focusing minds is a fun challenge and can be used with all age groups and abilities. Using a sound effect to stimulate ideas within groups also creates restrictions which again focuses minds and prevents ideas and stories from becoming too ambitious.

If the ideas feel uncomfortably simple I think that's good. Simple doesn't mean boring! Using only one sound effect to inspire falls into that bracket of painfully simple.

Poetry is about reducing an idea/experience etc down to a true and uncluttered essence, there is no reason why animation and film shouldn't do the same.

Here are their films.

The teachers now spend the next three months, working with their classes using these techniques for adding sound to their animations and allowing sound to influence ideas for visual story telling and as an opening to exploring poetry. I will meet them again at the end of April when we shall be able to watch and evaluate the work they created.